Dear Future Gamer

Lawrence Diamond (FG59) mentioned an old text adventure game that would tell you off for swearing - it sounds very much like The Boggit to me (a piss-take of The Hobbit, obviously), a game I had on my Speccy. If you kept swearing it would eventually reset the machine - a bit annoying when the bloody thing took about five minutes to load!

I can't remember who published it (I'm sure they had a '4' in their name though) but I think it was written by a bloke called Fergus something-or-other (McCann/McNeil?) using The Quill (an ancient adventure game builder) and was the sequel to Bored of the Rings.

It also contained one of the most ridiculous puzzles ever seen in a text adventure, in my opinion. To get past the clearing with the Trolls, rather than waiting around for daybreak so the sun would turn them to stone, you had to say "Lux" in the clearing to make giant floodlights appear! Took me a while to figure that one out...

Steve Mallam

FG: Fergus McNeil co-wrote the game with Judith Child and they went under the name Delta 4. The game was actually published in the UK by CRL (what a vast, encyclopaedic knowledge I have: go on, test me...). Illogical puzzles have always been the biggest problem with adventure games, but they don't come much more illogical than that!